


I Will Find You

by twodwarves_oneeagle



Series: Silver Tongue [3]
Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Family Drama, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-26 04:45:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twodwarves_oneeagle/pseuds/twodwarves_oneeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dis finds out about her sons' relationship things go sour and Kili is kicked out of his home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: Prompt - A (sort of) continuation of Silver Tongue and Good Boy, where Dis finds out about how Kili had approached Fili in regards to their activities, and she is very unhappy with Kili. Kili storms out in a rage after his mother blames him and it is up to Fili and Thorin to cheer him up - in their special way.
> 
> So, essentially this prompt got away from me and now I’ve ended up with a lot more plot going on than I originally anticipated. So, I’ve split it into two parts just to make it slightly more manageable. As for right now, I feel its teen, but the rating will definitely be going up to M/E in the next chapter. I will also add more tags for the next chapter as I update it.
> 
> Ahahahaha. Aaaaaand, I apparently shouldn't submit things at 2AM. The title is definitely supposed to be I Will FIND You, not I Will Follow. /fail.

Fili wrung his fingers around the edge of his jacket, his eyes trained on a nowhere space, straining to listen to the voices from beyond the thick oak door.  Kili was loud and defiant and every so often Fili could hear the livid husk to his voice and a slap of palm on wood in protest. 

Their mother was much harder to understand; she remembered every inch of her courtly training and her fury is a quiet one. Her words are cut from a cloth meant to strangle and more often than not, Fili is sure she choked Kili’s arguments before he could bite them out.

The two had been in the kitchen for over an hour; Fili and Kili had come home from the forge, dirty, sweating and laughing and Dis met them with a stony gaze and set lip. “A word, Kili, if you don’t mind.” Her voice had been chilling and Fili had to tuck his thumbs into the hem of his trousers to keep himself from reaching out for his brother.

Fili knew well enough what this was about; it was the moment he had dreaded since the first time he kissed Kili with more interest than that of a brother. They had always known to keep it under wraps, a part of them knowing it was wrong, sick, forbidden. But, Kili didn’t care. Kili never cared. 

That daunting line of right or wrong having little consequence of what his brother took or wanted. 

He could remember the first time Kili had kissed him, his eyes open and shining with mischief and affection. Fili remembered all of it, how he stumbled back, startled and scared, the days between where he tried to distance himself from his brother. 

Kili had him within the month, though. He caught him with a net of soft touches and playful tugs to his hair, he caught him by sparring and grinning and hiding in trees. 

In truth, Fili had been snared with his brother for an age, it just took the kiss to see it. 

Until a month ago, they had been cautious and careful and kept this part of them hidden and secret. They shared stolen kisses and came together in the dark, away from prying vicious eyes. Often they had joked about being caught in the same way they joked about orcs and dragons. The brothers had known it was a very real threat, but while wrapped up in each other it seemed so distant and harmless. 

Kili had become reckless when trying to get their uncle’s attention -- Fili ran his fingers roughly through his hair, not even wanting to entertain the idea that their mother might know about _that_ too. 

Unable to sit still any longer, Fili paced along the room, circling around the door that kept him from his brother. The voices had grown too silent as of late and Fili had to all but press his ear up to the oak door to hear anything. Just barely, he could hear his mother’s admonishing voice. 

“There is _nothing_ for you to say, Kili. There is nothing that will change what you’ve done! This is a sickness. You might think it’s right but it’s a _sickness_ that’s rooted in your head.” Fili winces on the opposite side of the door, reaching for the door knob, wanting to go to his brother. “I have lost enough to the sickness in the heart’s of Durin men, I will not have it take my sons!” 

A tightness clenched at Fili’s throat, and his breath shortened painfully.

“I’m not sick, mother.” Kili hisses; he sounded feral and dangerous from the accusation, matching ire with their mother. “I’m not sick! I...I think Fili is my--” 

Fili pushes into the room when he hears the slap of flesh on flesh clearly even through the oaken door. The side of Kili’s face is blooming red and his mouth hangs open in shock; Dis has never hit him before. 

Their mother is shaking, all of her emotions vibrating too close to the skin uncontrollably. She looks just as shocked as her sons, staring at her hand as if it didn’t belong to her. The room is full of the ringing of tension and it’s Dis who regains herself first. “Don’t.” Her voice wavers and cracks so violently she has to repeat herself, “Don’t you _dare_ make a mockery of that, Kili, not with this... _this.”_ Fili steels himself when his mother can’t seem to find a word with enough venom to describe him and his brother, instead waving accusingly at them. 

Fili is stuck in the doorway, watching his mother and brother. Maybe it’s cowardice, but even now he can’t make himself take Kili’s hand. He knows he should, he knows he should reach out and comfort his brother and run his fingers through his hair and reassure him, but he just _can’t._ His traitorous body won’t move. His flesh and bones that ache for Kili won’t even move towards his brother, even though his heart is screaming for it. 

His body has never been more of a prison. 

“Get out, Kili.” His mother is seething now, for the first time her volume matching her lividity. “You may be of Durin blood, but you’re not my son. Get out.” 

Kili looks as if he’s been slapped a second time, there is a pleading in his eyes. “Mother...”

“You no longer have the right to call me that, _get out.”_ She points at the door and her dark eyes burn hot, so much so Fili can’t even look at their mother without feeling scorch and ash along his spine. 

Kili’s face closes in on itself: there’s no light in his eyes, no expressive twist to his lips or furrow in his brows. In that moment he’s a kind of cold that Fili can’t recognize. 

His shoulder knocks against Fili’s as he storms out of the kitchen. It’s not affectionate, it’s angry. It’s heartbreaking. Kili is up the stairs in seconds, and Fili could hear him rummaging around the rooms upstairs. It sounded like he was packing. 

Finally, his feet wrench free of the hardwood and Fili turns on the balls of his feet, knowing he had to comfort his brother. 

“Stop. Right. There.” Dis is burning a hole through Fili’s jerkin just with her glare alone. “Don’t you leave this kitchen, Fili.” She’s still shaking and has to reach out for the chair to sturdy her. “If you leave, you’ll never be welcome here again.” 

Fili froze, searching his mother for some sort of leeway, some understanding that it’s Kili and he _has_ to go to him. He found no give in her shadowed eyes or the regal stiffness she held her head high with. 

“Please,” she asks without truly asking, her voice softening from tight cords to silk. “Please, Fili. Don’t.”

Fili didn’t know why he faltered and stayed in that stifling kitchen with his mother, but he knows he missed his window of opportunity when the front door slammed, shaking the very foundations. 

Kili was gone.

Sinking into a kitchen chair, Fili swore, his fingers grabbing bunches of blond hair. The air feels empty and colder already. His mother reaches across to her son, squeezing his shoulder. “Thank you, Fili.” 

Fili feels sick under his mother’s hand, shrugging it off. “Don’t touch me.” 

Dis squeezes his shoulder again before letting go, trying to occupy her shaking hands with chopping vegetables for that night’s dinner. The silence swallows both their voices, leaving them to their thoughts. 

In his head, Fili was organizing a list of places to look for his brother. There were old, lonely mine shafts in the mountains they had discovered, the canopy of tree tops towards the edge of all the buildings where the forest took over again. There were taverns his brother frequented that all needed to be checked, Fili thought those might be first. Anyone would need a drink after that. 

Aulë, even _he_ needs a drink after that. Fili can feel the bile rising in the back of his throat, replaying what had happened in his head over. Regret shows him everything sharp and focused and in his mind he thinks he sees the betrayal on his brother’s face when he didn’t defend him, didn’t step up and share blame.

He was roused from his planning by a sob, almost surprised to see his mother’s shoulders dipping and racking with tears. Blinded by the salt in her eyes, Dis sets the knife down on the cutting board. “I hit him,” Her voice cracks and drowns in her own disbelief, “I hit him. I hit my...my,” She can’t bring herself to say _son_ after all that had happened. “I hit Kili.” 

Dis’ hair falls forward, the heels of her palms supporting her head as she curled over the counter, “I didn’t mean...I said such horrible things. Mahal, I _hit_ him.” Fili can’t bring himself to forgive his mother, but he can’t bring himself to muster up his own anger either. 

He felt numb. Each thud of his heart is telling him _find Kili, find him._ Instead, he remains crumpled in the kitchen chair, listening to his mother sob, asking rhetorics of what she did wrong, how she had raised her boys to end up like that. 

She finally manages to compose herself, continuing to thinly slice the carrots for the stew. “I’m sorry, Fili.” Dis concedes, keeping her back to him. “I did what I thought was right.” Picking up the carrots, she carries them over to the boiling pot and drops them in, giving it a stir in the process. She wets her lips before continuing, “It wasn’t right, Fili. Especially not for you, you’re to be a King. You’ll have a wife, make heirs of your own. It’s better that this... _dalliance_ end.” 

For the most part, Fili has stopped listening. He grunts in reply to her, and sups with her stonily once the stew is finished. He knows _dalliance_ is far from what he and Kili had. It’s barely been an hour since Kili was trying to tell Dis that Fili was his _one_. He never managed to say it, but Fili knows, and he doesn’t doubt for a second that it could be true. 

Once the sun extinguished beneath the edge of the mountains, Fili grabbed his cloak and left to hunt for his brother under the pretense of ‘going to the tavern’.

It’s not entirely false, he went to every tavern in Ered Luin to look for his brother. He even knocks on the windows of some once they had closed up shop, asking after his brother. 

No one had seen Kili, or no one would say they had. 

Fili is undeterred and slips unseen into closed, lonely mines his brother and him had found for privacy and he ventured to the forest where Kili would hunt and practice his archery.  Fili even tried the courtyard where they would train, often showing off for Thorin as they did. 

The courtyard gives him pause, looking at the expanse and wondering if this was where they had been found out. Weeks ago they had been bold and brazen and kissed there, assuming only Thorin had been present. It was entirely possible there had been another set of eyes. 

Brushing his fingers over his favoured blunted blades unsheathing them with a sure grip, Fili shook his head. No, that didn’t make sense. His mother was not the type to leave an issue lie, she would have pounced much sooner, not let them continue long enough to see the face of the moon leave and come again. 

Returning the blades to their proper home, Fili looked towards the sky -- he was well into the hour of the wolf with still no sign of his brother. “Where _are_ you, Kili?” Fili asked to the stone and the blades and the chirping insects. “Aulë, let you be okay.” 

Fili resigned himself to the fact his body was weary and sluggish and demanding of rest. Reluctantly, he returned home; welcomed by nothing but the emptiness of the room he had always shared with his brother. 

Mechanically, Fili stripped himself down and laid himself across the bed. His hand tracing the slight dip in the mattress where his brother was meant to be. The mess of clothing and belongings from Kili’s haphazard packing were still strewn on the bed opposite him. Among them he saw his brother’s cloak; as Fili drifted into an uneasy sleep, his last thought was of his brother cold out among the dark.  

-

In his dream, Kili sat on the window sill, dour and watchful. There were no stars in the dark of his eyes and his face was set into an uncharacteristic frown. With the grace of a wild cat, Kili flipped from the windowsill to the bedside in one movement, brushing his fingers through his golden hair. “You didn’t come after me, Fili.” Fili’s not sure if he hears an accusation or just a statement, either way guilt rolls in his gut. “I kept looking back for you.”

“I’m sorry.” In his dream, Fili’s voice is hoarse and over tired. “I wanted to. I wanted to go after you, Kili.” 

Kili’s expression softened and there’s a curious sort of sadness about him that Fili doesn’t know how to approach. He says nothing, just reaches out to kiss his brother instead. Kili hesitates at first, no more than a split second but Fili noticed and his heart twists in on itself, aching. 

Dark hair, adventuring, demanding Kili has never hesitated when it came to anything in his life. The stutter of his movements screech loudly through Fili, through his fingers and his bones. It just makes Fili kiss harder, pressing in to his brother, needing to give him all the reassurance that he didn’t before. 

When they break apart, half breathless, there’s a warring look behind his eyes. “Maybe you shouldn’t look for me,” Kili suggests. 

Even in a dream, the suggestion wounds. “What? No. Kili, I will always look for you. I will find you. I promise.” He kisses Kili again as if to say _we will be together again._

“Moth--Dis said you’re to be a proper king for our people after Thorin.” Fili gave his brother a hard look, knowing that’s not any kind of reason that Kili would concern himself with. “Good kings apparently don’t fuck their brothers.” Kili laughed bitterly, “Or their uncles, but she doesn’t seem to know about our time with Thorin.” 

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about being a good king if that means you hiding away somewhere.” Fili rises up, collaring his brother’s neck with his hands, tugging them close. “I was listening to your fight with mother, Kili.” Bringing their foreheads together, Fili inhales his brother’s scent deeply, letting the scent of pine needles and wood chips, stone and mountain air rush over him. “I heard what you said, about me being your one?” 

Kili tenses in Fili’s arms, ready to pull away. “Fili...” 

“I believe it,” Fili gave him another kiss, soft and mounting. Their foreheads rested together when it was over. “Stay?” 

“I didn’t come to stay, Fili.” Kili extricated himself from the refuge of his brother’s arms. “I forgot my cloak,” he explained, padding across the room and picking it up. Swiftly he wraps it around his shoulders and closes the clasp around it. 

He hops up the short distance from the floor to the window sill, sitting half way in, half way out. “I love you,” Kili smiles sadly, kissing the air in Fili’s direction.  

As Kili climbs down from the window sill, dropping completely out of sight, Fili whispers a promise to the room and the night and to anyone who would listen. “I will find you.” 


	2. Winter Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A) All of you are awesome for bearing with me, seriously, I would not put up with my own shit. You guys are awesome. I love all of you. B) I went into this with the full intention of porn. FULL INTENTION. But by the end of it, I just couldn’t make it work. This is also the version after I’ve cut down on a lot of ideas. It was supposed to have a lot more scenes that I just couldn’t make fit right. So…it’s kind of angst and then fluff. And I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending, but I REALLY WANTED IT DONE. I JUST WANT TO WRITE NOTHING BUT PORN NOW. Let me go curl into a ball of sex, kay? Kay.

Fili’s body protested against the morning light, streaming in through the open window, it danced warmth across his face and body. Fili kept his eyes closed for as long as possible, thinking he could pretend Kili was still in the room with him, that yesterday never happened. He manages another fifteen minutes like that, maybe twenty before pulling himself up from the bed. With just enough hope to wound, Fili looks for his brother on the bed opposite his own. 

The room is a kind of empty he can feel in the marrow of his bones. A kind of empty that hurts from the inside out, that makes him feel like his heart is pumping dust through dried veins. 

He made a long process of drawing water for cleaning himself up enough to be presentable, his body making all the decisions. Fili’s mind was otherwise occupied, thinking of all the exit roads that left Ered Luin, trying to map the inns that peppered the roads there. If he couldn’t find his brother in town, he would hunt him beyond the walls, beyond the mountains, into the heart of the East itself if he had to. 

Fili’s mind was so occupied with all the maps and plans that he almost missed it on his way out the door. A foot out, Fili retreated back into his room, looking at his brother’s bed. Studying it, he tried to figure out what it was that had caught his interest among the mess; his mouth dropped with a small gasp when it hit him. 

Kili’s cloak was gone. 

 

-

 

The door bell jingled as Fili pushed into his uncle’s forge. The sun was early rising and he was not yet working. Thorin’s blue eyes traced Fili’s outline, his lips setting into an expectant line. “I see one of you, now where is the other?” 

It was hard to admit to Thorin; Fili bowed his head as he did, “I don’t know.” 

Thorin’s brows shadowed his eyes and his hard set features darken. “You don’t know?”

“He’s gone,” Fili clarifies, trying to keep the pain from his voice, “Kili’s left.”  He stands rigidly as Thorin approaches him; in that moment every time he’s ever heard Thorin telling him to watch out for his brother and to keep Kili safe is ringing and echoing around his skull deafeningly. 

Thorin nods gruffly at his nephew, setting down his tools. “Tell me what happened,” He instructs, finding a seat and offering one to Fili too. He settles into the wood of the chair, his arms crossed over his chest and his legs crossed, ankle to knee. Thorin is quiet and his gaze flinty and unyielding, giving Fili the fullest of his attention.

Fili picks and selects his words at first, but before long the entire story is avalanching from his lips. He keeps no detail from his uncle and falters only once or twice when Thorin shifts his weight and radiates his annoyance like a flame. 

If there was one thing the children of Thráin shared, it was the strength of their conviction and the whip of their anger that snapped and bit and did not fade. 

Thorin wasted little and less time putting on his layers; when close enough he leaned in and kissed his nephew’s forehead. “We will find him, I promise Fili.” Fili closed his eyes and took a moment to appreciate the warmth and the affection his uncle offered; it rang hollow and the warmth stopped short of reaching his chest, but its the first comfort he’s had since the incident. 

Kili brought them together with teeth and skin and passion and without him, the sensation flattened for Fili. Kili was his sun, and in his absence, nothing could replace him. A part of Fili was guilty to admit it to himself, but Thorin was but a flickering candle in the dark that Kili has left. 

Even still, he reached out for his uncle, giving him a squeeze on his forearm. Fili’s fingers catch in the cotton tunic, grabbing far more desperately than he could control. Thorin sheltered him in his arms, resting his cheek against his gold braids. 

They separate almost as quickly as they had come together; their prudence would not allow them a moment while Kili was alone and unaccounted for.

Hunting with Thorin wielded results far better than searching on his own. A rattish, weasel-word tavern owner that had sworn to Mahal and back that he hadn’t seen Kili folded under Thorin, admitting he had sold the boy ale.

Fili offered him the stiffest upper lip possible, narrowing his eyes at the dwarf. 

From others they heard of a theft at the stables that had happened in the dark of the wolf hour, a pony was missing along with a saddle and light provisions. Fili’s heart plummeted. Counting the hours since then and now, there are a dozen little inns Kili could be holed up, and that’s if he even stopped to take sleep. 

Thorin thanked the dwarf for the information and Fili is amazed at the restraint that keep his taut muscles from snapping. Thorin looks wound and ready to spring, his teeth almost feral flashing under his lips, his fingers tightening into thick bunches. Fili starts moving before Thorin’s resolve can snap, putting paces between them and the messenger. 

“Ready us some ponies, Fili.” Thorin’s voice was a mire of anger, edged with an infectious concern that seeped through Fili in his bones. Nodding his head, watching his uncle, waiting for the next instructions. “When you have them prepared, meet me by the front gate.” 

Faltering, the look on his face must have spoke volumes, Thorin answered him without a question between them. “I’m going to speak with my sister.” 

Left watching the snapping of Thorin’s cloak at his heels, the younger did as he was told, heading to the stable and paying for the handsomest of mounts he could for his uncle and himself. The saddles and provisions provided with a drop of Thorin’s name. 

In its entirety, it took him but a half hour to ready everything they would need. And so he waited in the shadow of the gate of Ered Luin, the tall stern statues making his skin feel uncomfortably tight with unknown tension. 

Fili was left waiting at the gates for over an hour, tending to the ponies and keeping them still as he looked for Thorin in the direction of home -- or rather, the house they lived. It would never be home again. Home was a place of love, and the fight had mined any of all that warmth from the foundations and plastered walls.

Through the crowd, Thorin stalked to the front gate, moving silent and threatening as a storm cloud ready to thrash at the poor villages below, Fili found his gaze weighted towards the fur of his uncle’s cloak rather than face the misdirected wrath that burned in his eyes. 

“I’ve spoken with _your_ mother.” Thorin spat; Fili felt a cold drop in his heart, the association of Dis as _his_ rather than Thorin’s own relation was a clear indicator of how that had gone. “When we find Kili, if we cannot find you your own accommodations, you will be staying with me. The both of you.”

Fili snapped his eyes up to Thorin’s face, awe slicing in his eyes. Fili could only imagine how the conversation with Dis had gone if this bit of news was shared with bitter tonality than one of praise. “If she no longer lays her claim as Kili’s mother, that is her prerogative. You are both still my heirs and I will not have one of you roaming Durin knows where. It is far past the time I should have been raising you to know the ways of court and throne. It is one thing to be a warrior, Fili, another thing entirely to rule and I expect that from both you and your brother.” 

The young prince was well aware of the half truth swimming through his uncle’s words; but in the public with ears and eyes all around, he accepted it with a slight bump of his arm against Thorin’s. It was the smallest of gesture of thanks, and Fili warred with himself trying to figure out how he could ever repay his uncle’s hospitality and care.

At the back of his mind, Fili knew that Thorin would never accept anything, because if Thorin saw himself benefiting in anyway from his actions, he would accept no gratitude or paid due. 

Hoisting himself onto the saddle, Fili pressed the heel of his boots into the side until the pony started off at a trot. He fell in step behind the larger of the two steeds and together they rode wordlessly through the winding mountain path. 

By the time they reach the inn, the sun had dipped in the sky considerably. Thorin checked the inns while Fili searched through the stables. There were only tall, proud stallions that look at him with wide, warm eyes; the one mare of the stable seems to wicker her condolences as he turned to leave. 

Fruitlessly, Thorin and Fili searched inn after inn, town after town, venturing far enough east that dwarves became a commodity among the sights of men. Their search narrowed considerably, people far more likely to tell a dwarf from their regular patron and with a flash of coin, much more loose lipped about which way he went. 

Even with the ocean of places they could hunt narrowing into a stream, Fili felt his feet drag and his heart slow at the end of every day. His shoulders grew heavy and he slumped into bed, eyes open on the window, waiting for Kili to appear before him -- a dark wraith against the lit window.

Every night he watched, every night Kili never came to him. Morning would rise and Fili would grow more ashen each day. “I’m looking,” He’d catch himself muttering, “Aulë, Kili, I’m looking.” There was a cold pulse that ran through him when Fili could no longer say with conviction he would find his brother, a terror that ate him hollow from the inside out. 

One particularly bad night, Fili fell to bed as dead men fell to battle, shaking with the desperation that he would not show in daylight and the sobs he would never allow himself to hear. A horrible, bitter seed planted itself, woven deep to the root of him that in the dark whispered over and over: _You let him go. You let this happen._ The fatigue was drawing on him, making him susceptible, low-spirited, _weak_. 

Fili all but jumped when the cot sunk with the added weight of his uncle. Fili craned his head, looking over into the pale eyes, shadowed and remorseful that flickered with fires of another time. “Thorin,” He managed, his eyes shuttered and lips cracked and dry. 

In just a loose cotton tunic and small clothes, Thorin lined himself with his nephew, his strong arm resting over the trimmest section of his nephews body. Together they laid like that and eventually the shivers that wracked his body were chased away by the warmth and steady drumming of Thorin’s heart. 

“Every night I see you watch the window; you don’t sleep, you barely eat. Tell me, Fili, what are you looking for?” Thorin smooths Fili’s hair with his fingers, it’d become dry from the essentials he’s denied himself in sorrow. 

“Kili.” Fili breathed, thinking that should be painfully obvious, he had wanted after nor thought of nothing else since leaving Ered Luin. “Before he left, he came in through the window to grab his cloak. I thought he was a dream; I should have tried to stop him. I should have made him stay.” Fili dissolves into a dry sob, recounting every thing his guilt sharpened in him, everything he should have done, could have done, everything that he let pass him by. 

Thorin listened silently, moving from Fili’s scraggly mane to stroke along the shell of his ear, across his cheek and jaw. 

When Fili was quiet, Thorin’s chest heaved beside him in a thick, weighted sigh. “Behold the beasts we make of ourselves,” He hummed, pressing a kiss to Fili’s hair. “You hear voices in the night. They won’t let you sleep. They tell you  every manner of things you did wrong, anything you could have fixed.”

Fili nodded his head solemnly and Thorin continued. “I hear them too. I thought they were the voices of the dead, from Smaug, from our losses at Moria, but they are no specters, Fili. There are no whispering souls who think ill of me -- just myself. Every day I live with those I have lost, the choices in battle I cannot undo. I am never deaf to them, but I do not let them reign me.” Thorin nudged his nose against Fili’s ear. “Do not let yours reign you.”

Fili crumpled back against his uncle, finding a comfort he had not thought to seek before. “Sleep now,” Thorin spoke, his lips grazing across his temple in a kiss. “I will keep watch for Kili tonight.” In Thorin’s arm, Fili slept fitfully for the first time in weeks. 

 

-

 

The moon had waned, waxed and waned again and Fili felt each and every day that went by so physically, they were practically marked into his skin; cracks of red, dry scabs, the mark of bone against what should have been a sturdy frame. Fili’s face wore the worst of the battlefield, his cheeks gaunt, eyes cold; what once was summer had long faded once the first day of a new month passed. 

Fili, the winter sun, cold and white where golden resplendence used to live. What’s worse was he knew, he knew exactly what he’s become. And, even with Thorin trying to chase away all the guilt during the nights, he knows it’s his fault. 

There was a week where he almost got better, ate, slept, even bantered back and forth with the bar patrons to get information, the week he was almost himself again, a week where he was almost from the shadow into the sun. 

But, then came the dream: Kili cradled by the window sill of the inn, Thorin’s arm heavy over his side. _You’re taking so long,_ Kili had complained, wide dark eyes thinned and bitter. _Too long, brother._

Fili remembers feeling the ache as he reached out for Kili but could never touch, his fingers falling just short of his hair, flickering autumn browns and evening shadows in the candlelight. _I waited for you, but I can’t wait forever._ Kili turned back into the window sill to leave, knocking the candle over, wet wax dousing the flame. The light flickered out and his brother was gone.

Waking with a start enough to chase sleep from Thorin as well, Fili pushed himself up from the bed, sweat over his brow. Thorin weighted him with a silent, questioning look.  “Kili,” He breathed frantically, “He was here, I saw him.”

“No on was here, Fili.” Thorin huffs, pushing himself up from the bed to get a better look at his nephew. 

“No, he was _here_ , Thorin. Last time I thought I was dreaming, but he was there. He came in through the window and he knocked over--” Fili turned sharply, looking for the candle that Kili had knocked over. It stood stock straight, though weary and guttered out from its own cold puddle of wax. 

“The window’s closed,” Thorin said softly, reaching forward to coax Fili to him. 

Hesitation ran through his bones, looking helplessly between the candle and the window. Thorin gestured for him again, and Fili acquiesced sinking back to the mattress, his head in his hands as he raked through his pale hair. “It was so real.” He kept his head down in his palms, allowing a tiny pin prick of relief slide into his heart. It wasn’t his Kili who had said those things, not really. 

 But, Mahal he’d understand if Kili, wherever he was, thought them. 

 Thorin placed a light hand on Fili’s shoulder, light enough for Fili to feel like he needed it, to feel the fragility implied by it. Did Thorin think he was going mad? As it was, Fili was almost entertaining it as a fair assumption. “We have to find him, Thorin.” 

“We will, Fili.” Thorin placated, running his hand soothingly over his shoulder. Catching his eye, Fili could see a new sort of pain reflected in his uncle’s eye -- something living amongst all the dead ache shadowed there.

Unable to sit there any longer, Fili went for his clothing, throwing on layers that fit loosely around his shoulders and waist now. With an unsettled frown, Thorin followed in Fili’s lead, readying first himself then their ponies for departure. 

Fili tracked and hunted like a man possessed, any and all progress he had made in that week gone, dead to a gaunter face and a lighter step. It didn’t take long before Thorin started leading his pony behind Fili’s keeping an ever watchful eye on the younger, constantly fretting that he’d fall off as he became more wraithlike by the day. 

After a fortnight’s pass they had narrowed their search to the name of one small village -- so much so that it barely qualified for such a title. They were a day’s ride out when the rain started, heavy, blinding and torrential. 

Thorin shouted through the downpour, ordering Fili off the road when the lanterns of a roadside in went up. There was resistance, the feeling of _so close_ pulling at him, clawing at him, creating a need for him to move forward.  Eventually, the younger was persuaded when the ponies would sink with each step, taunting the all to real possibility of breaking their ankles in the mire that had become of the road. 

Given the coin, Fili was sent to secure them a room until the rain eased and if possible supper and brew to warm the chill from their bodies as they dried. 

The inn and adjoining tavern was small, especially by the standards of man. Fili paid with little words and received a key to a room and two tankards with even less. Shouldering his way into the tavern, he hunted for a seat with both chairs that had backs to a wall.

Eyes scanning across the tight quarters and the heads of man, he settled on a booth towards the back that look well avoided. He slid in among the thickly packed bodies, finding only his clothes would catch here or there. 

Closing in on the booth, Fili swore under his breath, his native language skittering roughly from his tongue as he noticed the remains of a plate already claiming the table. At the swears, the owner of the plate turned around, looking every inch of a drowned rat. In that instant, Fili had never seen anything more beautiful in all his life. 

“Kili,” He mouthed, his voice failing him. Unceremoniously dropping the tankards of ale on the table, his hands found their way to Kili’s damp shoulder, directing the younger towards him. “Mahal, Kili, it’s really you.”

There was something wounding in the way Kili’s eyes searched him, lighting with recognition and unfamiliarity at the same time. Fili’s hand slackened from his brother’s arm, though he wanted nothing more than to hold his brother close, to never let him go, to do something that would let him know this wasn’t another dream. 

Aulë, Fili didn’t think he could handle a dream this cruel. 

Kili’s words were slow in forming, “Fili,” His face warring between a relieved grin and the weariness it had come to bear in their time apart.  “You look awful.” 

The words slammed hard against his chest, winding him. Fili had pictured their reunion a hundred hundred times over and never once had he thought those might have been his brother’s first words to him.

Fili laughed, dry and sorrowful and cracked. “I...” He had no explanation for his brother, no reason why he should look half dead and hollow that would come forward; there was no way to explain the stranger’s appearance he had come to don, the one he barely recognized whenever he caught his reflection in passing windows or on the polished steel in towns. 

It was Kili who reacted first, nudging a shoulder to the table opposite him. “I didn’t think you’d come after me.” Fili knew enough of his brother to know that wasn’t the truth. The truth was written across all of his features, he had been waiting, waiting, waiting. 

There was something else in those eyes too that Fili didn’t recognize, an apprehension. 

Fili had no doubt that the vine of strangeness that seemed to strangle the spark in his brother’s eyes had been planted by their mother’s wrathful sibilants and arguments. “Nothing could keep me away, I’m your brother.”

“That would be the problem, is it not?” There was a sharpness in his eyes and tone that unbalanced Fili. Tentatively, he took the seat across from his brother, pushing the two tankards aside, absently checking for their uncle in the process. 

Though the tavern was loud and its patrons raucous, Fili leaned close posing a quiet question to his brother, eyebrows raised. In the moments of silence he took it upon himself to look over his brother now, still-damp hair longer than he had last seen with a dark hollow to his eyes.  

They were mirrors of decay, dismantled by every day alone.

“That never concerned you before, brother.” Fili used the word like a spade, searching for the reaction it would uncover. Kili flinched away from the title where before he would relish in it, eyes luminous and excited by a bond that was all their own. Now a taint had set in, Fili could see it living deep and dark behind his brother’s eyes. 

There was a long silent pause and Kili punctuated it by reaching for the tankard intended for Thorin. Dodging his Fili’s observation Kili asked, “You’re traveling with someone?” 

Fili let it slide, pressing his ankle against his brothers as if just the contact would make him well again. “Uncle Thorin came with me.” He immediately searched Kili’s face, gaging the expression. “We’ve been looking for you since the day you left.” 

Kili drained the tankard casting his eyes towards the front of the tavern where something was parting the guests. “Speaking of,” Kili mused, leaning further in to the wooden booth. The actions were so astronomically different from what Fili was used to seeing, it was is someone else was wearing Kili’s skin. The brother he had known would have pressed towards the coming of their uncle not away. His eyes should have lit and brightened, not shuttered out and darted away. 

The blond didn’t dare raise from the table or leave Kili’s side for a moment, not even to usher Thorin to the table. Instead he heralded him with a wave, his other hand trapping Kili’s wrist that seemed too small in his grip. 

Kili all but jumped when the blond’s thumb brushed over the bones of his wrist; Fili held fast. He would not lose Kili here, he would never lose his brother again. 

It didn’t take long for Thorin’s imposing stature loomed over the table; his body tensed and his movement shorted as his long, dark eyes roamed over the lost treasure they had been hunting for. Fili looked for ire and found it flickering below the surface of his uncle’s face, parried with a glow of concern. “ _Kili,”_ Thorin breathed, pressed every emotion he could muster into the name. 

Thorin saddled in beside Fili, his eyes keeping Kili trapped more than his body could. “You look awful,” He observed pointedly, and in that moment, Fili was struck by how similar the two of them were.

His brother seemed to shrink two sizes under Thorin’s look, unsure how to gage or react; Fili missed the boisterous and defiant gleam that used to rule his brother’s eye, the quick, sly saying on his tongue. He presses circles into Kili’s wrist, both hands woven around his brother’s one. “We’ve come to take you home,” Fili tried to offer kindly.

The panic in Kili’s eyes was immediate and wild. “No,” He objected, his whole body shaking with denial. “No, I’m not going back.” Through the dismay, Kili’s eyes coloured with apology, his head shaking again, but his hands are grabbing at Fili, taking bunches of his wet tunic between his fingers. “I can’t. Not there.”

Thorin’s tone is seven different shades, ranging from placating to commanding, “You will not be going back to Dis.” Kili goes still, blinking owlishly with shadowed eyes that Fili wants to kiss the darkness away from.

“Being apart is killing you -- the both of you, you look grey and weak.” Fili’s eyes darted down to Kili’s hands gripping him; his own fingers on the archer’s pulse point and he couldn’t help but think that this was the strongest he’d felt in a long, long time. “You will have your own accommodations. I am not wont to see you separated again.” 

Fili watched the slow processing show on his brother’s face, slowly the realization coming alive as Kili’s face pulled back into a grin, probably the first that had lived there in a months time. Kili grabbed again at his brother’s arm, higher and firmer this time, his eyes landing sharing space with Fili’s. The blond was so caught in that gaze, the stirrings of warmth returning to his chest. 

The winter sun was thawing in his bones; it was a spring long deserved. 

Thorin kept them at that table for food, and both of them ate with a passion renewed. Admittedly enough, Fili reflected, to make himself sick. The entire evening Fili kept his hand or his foot or his thigh up against his brother, and when they finally pulled themselves up from the table, drunk on their reunion more than the ale, their hands found places along arms or along the small of the back. 

They climbed to the room and fell into the bed in a pile of laughs and gentle, exploring kisses. Time slowed and their fingers brushed paths over each other shedding layers of still damp clothing to the floor until it was just the two of them flush together, the watchful eye of their uncle on the bed across. 

Fili wrapped himself around his brother in the bed, kissing behind his ear and nosing into his hair, rememorizing every inch of his brother, his arm tossed securely around Kili’s waist. With his brother’s weight settled against his chest and his breathing filling the air of the room, Fili kissed the younger’s shoulder tenderly. 

He settled in and whispered his love to the night and any force that would listen, “I have found you.”

 


End file.
